Waste: 1. Unwanted materials left over from a manufacturing process.
2. Refuse from places of human or animal habitation.

Waste Characterization: Identification of chemical and microbiological
constituents of a waste material.

Waste Exchange: Arrangement in which companies exchange their
wastes for the benefit of both parties.

Waste Feed: The continuous or intermittent flow of wastes into
an incinerator.

Waste Generation: The weight or volume of materials and products
that enter the waste stream before recycling, composting, landfilling,
or combustion takes place. Also can represent the amount of waste generated
by a given source or category of sources.

Waste Load Allocation: 1. The maximum load of pollutants each
discharger of waste is allowed to release into a particular waterway.
Discharge limits are usually required for each specific water quality
criterion being, or expected to be, violated. 2. The portion of a stream's
total assimilative capacity assigned to an individual discharge.

Waste Minimization: Measures or techniques that reduce the amount
of wastes generated during industrial production processes; term is also
applied to recycling and other efforts to reduce the amount of waste going
into the waste stream.

Waste Stream: The total flow of solid waste from homes, businesses,
institutions, and manufacturing plants that is recycled, burned, or disposed
of in landfills, or segments thereof such as the "residential waste
stream" or the "recyclable waste stream."

Waste Treatment Lagoon: Impoundment made by excavation or earth
fill for biological treatment of wastewater.

Waste Treatment Plant: A facility containing a series of tanks,
screens, filters and other processes by which pollutants are removed from
water.

Waste Treatment Stream: The continuous movement of waste from
generator to treater and disposer.

Waste-Heat Recovery: Recovering heat discharged as a byproduct
of one process to provide heat needed by a second process.

Waste-to-Energy Facility/Municipal-Waste Combustor: Facility where
recovered municipal solid waste is converted into a usable form of energy,
usually via combustion.

Wastewater: The spent or used water from a home, community, farm,
or industry that contains dissolved or suspended matter.Water Pollution:
The presence in water of enough harmful or objectionable material to damage
the water's quality.

Wastewater Infrastructure: The plan or network for the collection,
treatment, and disposal of sewage in a community. The level of treatment
will depend on the size of the community, the type of discharge, and/or
the designated use of the receiving water.

Wastewater Operations and Maintenance: Actions taken after construction
to ensure that facilities constructed to treat wastewater will be operated,
maintained, and managed to reach prescribed effluent levels in an optimum
manner.

Wastewater Treatment Plan: A facility containing a series of tanks, screens, filters, and other processes by which pollutants are removed from water. Most treatments include chlorination to attain safe drinking water standards.

Water Purveyor: A public utility, mutual water company, county
water district, or municipality that delivers drinking water to customers.

Water Quality Criteria: Levels of water quality expected to render
a body of water suitable for its designated use. Criteria are based on
specific levels of pollutants that would make the water harmful if used
for drinking, swimming, farming, fish production, or industrial processes.

Water Quality Standards: State-adopted and EPA-approved ambient
standards for water bodies. The standards prescribe the use of the water
body and establish the water quality criteria that must be met to protect
designated uses.

Water Quality-Based Limitations: Effluent limitations applied
to dischargers when mere technology-based limitations would cause violations
of water quality standards. Usually applied to discharges into small streams.

Water Quality-Based Permit: A permit with an effluent limit more
stringent than one based on technology performance. Such limits may be
necessary to protect the designated use of receiving waters (e.g. recreation,
irrigation, industry or water supply).

Water Solubility: The maximum possible concentration of a chemical
compound dissolved in water. If a substance is water soluble it can very
readily disperse through the environment.

Water Storage Pond: An impound for liquid wastes designed to accomplish
some degree of biochemical treatment.

Water Supplier: One who owns or operates a public water system.

Water Supply System: The collection, treatment, storage, and distribution
of potable water from source to consumer.

Water Table: The level of groundwater.

Water Treatment Lagoon: An impound for liquid wastes designed
to accomplish some degree of biochemical treatment.

Water Well: An excavation where the intended use is for location,
acquisition, development, or artificial recharge of ground water.

Water-Soluble Packaging: Packaging that dissolves in water; used
to reduce exposure risks to pesticide mixers and loaders.

Water-Source Heat Pump: Heat pump that uses wells or heat exchangers
to transfer heat from water to the inside of a building. Most such units
use ground water. (See: groundsource heat pump;
heat pump.)

Waterborne Disease Outbreak: The significant occurence of acute
illness associated with drinking water from a public water system that
is deficient in treatment, as determined by appropriate local or state
agencies.

Watershed: The land area that drains into a stream; the watershed
for a major river may encompass a number of smaller watersheds that ultimately
combine at a common point.

Watershed Approach: A coordinated framework for environmental
management that focuses public and private efforts on the highest priority
problems within hydrologically-defined geographic areas taking into consideration
both ground and surface water flow.

Watershed Area: A topographic area within a line drawn connecting
the highest points uphill of a drinking waterintake into which overland
flow drains.

Weight of Scientific Evidence: Considerations in assessing the
interpretation of published information about toxicity--quality of testing
methods, size and power of study design, consistency of results across
studies, and biological plausibility of exposure-response relationships
and statistical associations.

Weir: 1. A wall or plate placed in an open channel to measure
the flow of water. 2. A wall or obstruction used to control flow from
settling tanks and clarifiers to ensure a uniform flow rate and avoid
short-circuiting. (See: short-circuiting.)

Well: A bored, drilled, or driven shaft, or a dug hole whose depth
is greater than the largest surface dimension and whose purpose is to
reach underground water supplies or oil, or to store or bury fluids below
ground.

Well Field: Area containing one or more wells that produce usable
amounts of water or oil.

Well Injection: The subsurface emplacement of fluids into a well.

Well Monitoring: Measurement by on-site instruments or laboratory
methods of well water quality.

Well Plug: A watertight, gastight seal installed in a bore hole
or well to prevent movement of fluids.

Well Point: A hollow vertical tube, rod, or pipe terminating in
a perforated pointed shoe and fitted with a fine-mesh screen.

Wellhead Protection Area: A protected surface and subsurface zone
surrounding a well or well field supplying a public water system to keep
contaminants from reaching the well water.

Wetlands: An area that is saturated by surface or ground water
with vegetation adapted for life under those soil conditions, as swamps,
bogs, fens, marshes, and estuaries.

Wettability: The relative degree to which a fluid will spread
into or coat a solid surface in the presence of other immiscible fluids.

Wettable Powder: Dry formulation that must be mixed with water
or other liquid before it is applied.

Wheeling: The transmission of electricity owned by one entity
through the facilities owned by another (usually a utility).

Whole-Effluent-Toxicity Tests: Tests to determine the toxicity
levels of the total effluent from a single source as opposed to a series
of tests for individual contaminants.

Wildlife Refuge: An area designated for the protection of wild
animals, within which hunting and fishing are either prohibited or strictly
controlled.

Wire-to-Wire Efficiency: The efficiency of a pump and motor together.

Wood Packaging: Wood products such as pallets, crates, and barrels.

Wood Treatment Facility: An industrial facility that treats lumber
and other wood products for outdoor use. The process employs chromated
copper arsenate, which is regulated as a hazardous material.